Modern day commercial activity is very much dependent on the shipping and warehousing of various types of products and manufactured goods. Just in time manufacturing requires the highest level of efficiency in terms of managing the shipping and storage of goods.
One of the key elements is to have a large stockpile of goods stored in huge warehouses. Warehouses today can be as large or larger than 800,000 square feet, a quarter of a mile long and have storage systems that can be 20 feet tall.
In order to benefit from the large number of goods being stored, one must be able to know exactly how much of a particular product is in the warehouse. When orders come in, the vendor must be able to determine quickly if they have the proper number of the ordered goods on hand. Even though computer tracking systems are efficient in monitoring the sales and receipt of goods, there periodically has to be a reconciling of inventory. Reconciling means to compare an actual physical counting of the goods and compare that to what the computer tracking system states.
In addition, it's very important know where the goods are in the warehouse. Typically storage systems in a warehouse are assigned some type of location identification number. That number is then recorded in whatever inventory tracking system is used. However, sometimes the location identification is mistakenly entered or the goods are accidentally placed in the wrong location. If the goods aren't where the inventory system says they should be, then much time is wasted physically inspecting the entire warehouse to find the goods. This is made even more time consuming because many warehouse shelving systems are 20 feet high and someone has to gain access to the upper shelves via some sort of movable ladder or a mechanical lift. Sometimes pallets of material have to be taken down to access goods that are located toward the back of the shelves and obscured by other goods.
There have been other attempts to make a useful and efficient method of automating a warehouse inventory system.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,693,757, “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING INVENTORY USING A MOBILE INVENTORY ROBOT”, describes a mobile inventory robot which is primarily designed to navigate through a retail store. The described robot includes an obstruction avoidance system, motorized drive wheels, a self-docking power recharging systems, and very sophisticated imaging processing systems to read bar codes on shelves and capture images of products on the shelves. In order to identify a product, an image captured during an inventory process must be compared to visual characteristics of the product (size, color, texture, images from multiple views) which has been previously entered into an inventory database.
It isn't clear that the system can actually generate a count of the number of items on a shelf. As shown in FIG. 7B the imaging camera can only see the items that are in front of a group of similar items. For instance, some Items 775 are in the back row and are therefore essentially invisible to the camera.
In order to efficiently and safely navigate the robot through the store, a number sensors are required, such as ultra-sonic detectors, retroreflective detectors, infrared transmitters and infrared receivers.
In addition, the navigation system may sometimes be unable to move the robot through the store and manual intervention by a human operator would be necessary to either remove the obstacle or reprogram the robot to avoid the obstacle.
The robot further includes a mechanical positioning system which can raise and lift the detection devices in order to read items stored in higher shelves. Not only does this increase the time to do an inventory because of the time taken to raise and lower the detectors but it also increases the chance of mechanical failure and maintenance costs.
Another attempt to produce an efficient inventory system is described in U.S. Patent Publication 2016/0239021, “AUTOMATED INVENTORY TAKING MOVABLE PLATFORM”. The automated moveable platform as described in the published application also utilizes a number of sensors. Shown in FIG. 1 is a light sensor 106, a radiation sensor 109, a camera 103, a humidity sensor 102, a temperature sensor 108, and a collision sensor 105. Further, paragraph [0009] requires “at least one of a camera, an IR-sensor, a laser ranging sensor, an ultrasound sensor, a collision sensor, a humidity sensor, a light sensor, a temperature sensor, a pressure sensor, a gas sensor, a radiation sensor, a radiofrequency or WiFi sensor, a positioning sensor.”
In addition, as described in paragraph [0021], the navigation system will adjust the speed and path of the robot depending on data regarding first time identified objects and previously identified objects.
In order to increase the reliability of the detection system, one or more of RFID antennas are able to move and/or rotate horizontally or vertically. Such an antenna system increases costs and maintenance time.
The previously described inventory systems are very complicated. They require multiple sensors, image capture and analysis software, motorized drive mechanisms and sophisticated software to control the path of the robot and avoid obstacles.